uch as one often finds. As things are, we
have to put up with M. Dumaine's description. Towards the river and the
marsh the castle trusted mainly to its natural defences; but at least on
the side towards the town it had a ditch which has now vanished. The
gates are gone, but the likeness survives of a building near the eastern
gate with two pointed arches rising from a pillar, known as _Les
Porches_. Here was the _Champ Belle-Noe_, and on the hill on the
opposite site of the valley was _Beaulieu_. The names were not ill
deserved; the stream and its accompaniments make a pleasant look-out.
But of the buildings of the castle nothing now is left; the utmost that
we can do is to make out, not the eastern gate itself, but its site. No
walls and bulwarks stand up; we must be content with calling up an
imagination what there once was. But that is enough; the castle of
Henry's day standing up would be best of all; a simple empty space would
be next best; but the scattered buildings of the little suburb which
occupies the castle site do not seriously hinder us from understanding
what we want to understand. In other lines all that Tinchebray has to
show is a desecrated fragment of the church of Saint Remigius just
outside the castle. Here is a central tower with a very short eastern
limb. On the eastern face of the tower is a Romanesque arcade, so very
simple and even rude that one is inclined to assign it to a time a good
bit earlier than the day of Tinchebray. But there is no such arcade on
the other sides, and the western arch of the tower is pointed. What are
we to infer when the place is locked and it is hopeless trying to get
the key? We do at least remember that the four lantern-arches at Saint
David's are not all of the same date; and we hope that, whenever the
pointed arch was made, the plain arcade was there on the 28th day of
September, 1106, just forty years after the father of the contending
princes had landed at Pevensey.

Our accounts are not very clear in their topography, and they do not
distinctly point out the site of the battle. The relieving force under
Duke Robert and Count William came from Mortain--that is, from the
south-west. A striking tale is told of their march. In crossing the
forest of _Lande-Pourrie_ to the south of Tinchebray the army heard mass
under a tree from the mouth of Vital, the holy solitary of Neufbourg.
Count William was his lord, if one who had renounced the world could be
said to have